To Whoever is Calling this "Social" Media, Please Stop. You're Embarrassing Us All.

It's easy for us to take the high road and call it abysmal to utilize the strategy demonstrated below. We would never do it to two dealers, let alone dozens. We also understand the need to make a solution scalable for the sake of profits as we have worked for companies that need to scale to serve hundreds or thousands of dealers. With that said, it is still atrocious and should stop immediately. This gives quality automotive social media marketing companies a bad name when they pull this sort of stuff.

When Brian West from @FusionZONE Automotive, Inc. showed this to me today, I begged him to let me expose it. He cordially allowed me and now I can't really say much about it without spewing more vitriol than I'm used to spewing.

The justification that I've heard for this type of activity is that nobody will like more than one dealership on Facebook. This is a naive statement, especially considering the rise of the pay-to-play social media model, the fact that they're posted at the same time, and sheer silliness of the question itself. Some of the stores for which the question was posted were in south Florida on a day when it was 75 degrees.

Social media is about creating a channel of communication between the dealership and local people. It's about posting relevant messages and exposing those messages to potential customers. It's about participating in the community that is comprised of the very people who can and should be buying cars. To auto-post using an automated, push-button strategy is absolutely worthless.

Here's the post itself. Looking at the dozens of dealers that posted this content led me to realize that this wasn't a mistake. It wasn't a one-off instance. Every piece of content is posted across the board.

This infuriates me. It isn't just lazy and ridiculous. It's sad that dealers are actually paying for this to happen. It doesn't have to be this way.

Oops... You need to stop "Lurking" on ADM and become a more genuine Automotive Professional by completing your membership registration. As a registered ADM Member, you can post comments, publish your own articles (be a star!) and start Forum discussions. Stop being an online "Peeping Tom" and JOIN ADM RIGHT NOW!

Thanks @MicahBirkholz - At the time I knew we were paving new roads, but when I see what other providers are delivering today, I realize that what our team delivered out of SkySon was not only industry leading at the time, it would be even more valuable to dealers today! The fact that ADP Human Resources saw the need to constrain our growth to our ability to hire and train enough SoMars was visionary on their part and reflects a lot on what the article above seems to lament.

I'm a member of both ADM and DE. I see duplicate blog post content being posted galore, but I don't think that necessarily hurts one's cause, especially if that content has already been indexed at the source / money site.

The decay and fall of guest blogging for SEO

Okay, I’m calling it: if you’re using guest blogging as a way to gain links in 2014, you should probably stop. Why? Because over time it’s become a more and more spammy practice, and if you’re doing a lot of guest blogging then you’re hanging out with really bad company.

Aaron, I once felt exactly like you and actually wrote about it here. Then, Ralph brought something to my attention that startled me. Using the example of ADM and DealerElite, he explained that when they cross-referenced their databases, they found that an overwhelming number of users were unique to one network or the other. While many of us (you and I included) participate in multiple networks and see the same content syndicated across them, the vast majority of members of ADM are not members of DE and visa versa. It bugged me to learn that because I used to only post unique content on one network and different content on the other network thinking that both would reach the same audience, but Ralph proved me completely wrong.

@Ryan--Ha! I didn't do so well in algebra so I'll have to take your word for it. While I definitely wouldn't go so far as to put the two on equal footing, as a content consumer I get tired of receiving email notifications from different platforms about essentially the same thing. Normally I just ignore it, but when this recycled content works so hard to hammer home the idea that people need to create fresh, unique content, I can't help but take exception.

Again, I'm not saying they're the same, but I see more similarities than differences--Low on uniqueness, high on duplication.

Welcome toAutomotive Digital Marketing
Please use the "Sign Up" link above to complete your registration form and become a member of the industry's leading Automotive Marketing and Internet Sales Professional Community. ADM members have access to resources, connections and private events that provide them with a competitive advantage.